


Like campfires in the dark

by scribblemyname



Series: Be Compromised 2014 Promptathon [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, Dancing, Dystopian, Established Relationship, F/M, Fantasy AU, First Meeting, Holy Water, Recruitment, Road Trip, Romance, mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:08:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2098503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nowhere to run, nowhere to escape the Great Strangeness creeping over the earth. They don't need to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like campfires in the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Prompt by inkvoices: [It's the journey, not the destination. Dystopian road/journey fic, AU or not.](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/412023.html?thread=7798903#t7798903)
> 
> Thank you to lithiumlaughter for the beta! You are awesome as always.

He walks the dusty road at the edge of a wilderness with arrows on his back. The holy water evaporates off of them in a faint hiss audible to the ears of monsters. He comes to a stop beside a patch of color, a woman sitting, teeth clenched around her canteen, her hair a riot of red curls.

She drops the canteen into the dust beside her and squints up at this intense, quiet man, sharp like an arrow in the dark. "Where are you headed?" she asks.

His teeth flash white and his chuckle is as dry as the wilderness around them. "You really have to ask?"

She doesn't. The answer is nowhere. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to escape the Great Strangeness creeping over the earth. They don't need to run.

It is a short distance to his car. New tires, she notes.

* * *

The first time she saw him, he was a motionless predator formed to the landscape. Clint Barton was a sniper: his aim was almost preternatural, his ease with projectiles and weaponry legendary, and his patience seemingly endless for perching in high places.

She had left Natalia Romanova behind in Russia, and here in an African country in turmoil from the the changes around them, she saw this American against the trunk of a tree and, on a whim, chose an Americanization of her name. Natasha Romanoff, she decided.

He hadn't seen her, and she didn't get in close so he would. She curled up in her own location and drowsed without sleeping, giving him neither attention nor inattention and keeping the tension out of her own aura.

In these times, he could be anything. He could be a monster being born within human skin. He could be a human with an uncanny knack for sensing monsters. He did seem to have an uncanny knack for shooting them down.

* * *

He offers her his canteen. She waves her hand to decline. He shrugs and drinks. Natasha can smell the sanctified ash and dust of the holy water.

He does not say, _I heard about Sao Paulo_. He does not say, _I heard about the fires burning the hospital to the ground_. She does not say, _I heard about the trouble in Harlem_. She does not say, _I watched the television all hours hoping to see that you had survived the doctor's change_.

At night, they have not reached a city, and Clint pulls his car off the road into a sheltering place marked with the wards of previous travelers. They climb into the backseat with the doors locked, and she lies with her head over his heart so she can hear it beat and know he is alive. His calloused archer fingers are wrapped around her neck over her pulse so he can feel she is also alive.

He could snap her neck. She could bury a knife in his belly before he knew it. They do not say, _I love you, I missed you,_ and _you are the only one I would trust like this_.

They do not untangle before the dawn.

* * *

The first time he saw her, she was a blur of motion taking down an entire pack in a dank corner of urban Chicago. Half were human; half were the silvery fur of wolves gleaming beneath a full moon.

Natasha was beautiful to watch: a dance of violence meted out in chokeholds, snapped limbs, and the retort of silver bullets flying from her guns. The organized crime represented by the pack was thousands of dollars and kilos of drugs, day in, day out down the seedy neighborhood. Clint's arrows glinted under the moon with her as they found their marks.

"Holy water," she said, undoubting, and allowed him to buy her a drink.

Over vodka, he told her she did good work, fighting the Strangeness in the city.

She shook her head, almost an admission. "I was hired by the rival pack."

"Ah."

They kept drinking, kept telling stories and exchanging tips. Clint could handle anything that flinched from holy water. Natasha could kill anything susceptible to silver.

"Do you want to dance?" he asked toward the end, head tilted in question, smile just a shade softer than it had been.

"Next time," she told him and ordered another drink.

* * *

"We never did go dancing," he mentions offhand on approach to a city.

Natasha looks up speculatively as the traffic increases, the road becomes a street, and the tents are pitched from within miles of the city limits. It is like this now, with all the changes. Humanity gathers in safer clumps, even if they are not safe, like gathering around campfires in the dark. She still prefers the wild places where the Great Strangeness began, but this is not a thing she tells Clint. "We never did," she tells him, as if that is remotely the direction of her thoughts.

It has been years. They have history now, always back to back, but somehow, they never did get around to that.

* * *

Tension prickles along her spine when they slip into a comfortable bar where Clint says the owner's okay. What he really means is that this is a haven for people who have not been changed into monsters. What he really means is that it is safe.

Natasha keeps a silver knife under her belt and a gun digs into her back. Clint's knives are dipped in holy water of his own making.

The music mingles with breath and sweat and the press of dancing bodies. She slides onto the stool beside Clint's. "Whatever he's having." Her own ease is a mask. Something here isn't right.

But Clint is smiling and she loves to see the way it lights up his face and crinkles his eyes as he laughs when she tells him about Stark's driver nearly crashing when she changed clothes and a male flight attendant stumbling all over himself when he realized who she was and, and, _and..._ They share stories of the months they have missed together. They do not talk about the hospital and the children burning in the fire. They do not talk about Harlem and the itinerant doctor destroying a community he had served so long.

Her flesh feels like it's on fire, and she knows it isn't just being with Clint. Natasha sets down her beer and shoves it back on the counter.

Holy water, she thinks. She should have known. Clint drinks it, but she never has. The very idea sends a shiver down her skin.

Clint's hand comes up to settle warmly against her arm. "Dance?" he asks, eyes playful and smile sweet just for her.

She hesitates, then shakes her head, all of her he is not touching crawling with the tension of this place. "Not here," she says.

He sees the panic in her eyes and lets it go.

* * *

The first time he ever touched her was a night under shining stars. He had tried one more time to sweet-talk her into joining SHIELD and protecting the scattered cities from the creatures of the dark and Strangeness.

Natasha looked out over the thick forests overrunning what used to be villages and towns. She stared at the knots of danger and wild and wondered why it felt like home.

"I'm not a good person, Clint," she finally said, wearily, voice heavy with the weight of years and blood and vengeance.

She heard him catch his breath and wondered why, until she thought it back over and realized she had called him by his first name.

He rolled over on his side on the makeshift pallet. A ward gleamed silver bright behind him.

"Natasha," he said, low and heavy with the weight of their growing history, the burden of the way they knew each other.

His fingers brushed her cheek, traced her jaw. She leaned gently into his touch, leaned harder when he kissed her softly, and pressed herself against him when he took her in his arms. They lost clothes and barriers, taking down their guards in soft cries and moans and whispered curses. They tangled themselves together, and neither was afraid of the night.

* * *

They drive again between nowhere and nowhere, an endless highway to lose the tension of the work they do.

Somewhere along the way, her hand twines into his and she feels him clenching back. He twists the steering wheel to the right and pulls off the road, then turns to her and pulls her to him with a fierceness she has missed and longed for.

She tastes him like he is oxygen, and she has been drowning for a long, long time.

* * *

Cities pass in a blur of people, colors, music, and the smells of sweat and silver. Blessed wards and silver jewelry have become common as prayers among the people. Between the cities, they drive, never needing to fill the silence or quiet the noise of their coming together.

At night, Clint prefers to find the wayhouses and shelters, but Natasha has always preferred the wild places and the stars. She talks him into one last night by the light of their own campfire and watches him sprinkle the rocks with water and prayers.

The stars are bright pinpricks high above the dusty wilderness around them. She takes his hand and whispers, "Clint. Let's dance."


End file.
